Photographer's Note

Toronto, Canada. Taken at the annual aboriginal festival at the Rogers Centre last week.

To continue on my last post re: the upcoming general vote on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples I want to post another quote from my interview with Vicky Corpuz, UN Chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Here she talks about Canada's contribution to the formulation of the Declaration:

"[Canada] was very active in helping formulate the language of the declaration. … there was a lot of negotiating with them. … but looking back…they were really there precisely because they wanted to watch that there was no strong language that might even be stronger and that may undermine what they have done here in relation to the aboriginal Canadians. … Now I tell my aboriginal Canadian friends: ‘you know what? Even at the very beginning I couldn’t trust your own government because they are just too good to be true and true enough what you see now is just being consistent with the way they have been behaving."

Along with the US, Australia, and New Zealand, Canada voted against the Declaration this past June at the UN Human Rights Council.

Hi Alex!
I guess a narrower DOF would've made this shot much better. I'm not quite happy with the crowd which I find somewhat distracting. These being said I think it's a nice portrait and I find it useful for the activist message in your note. I like the artists image seemingly loaded with the entire history of his people. Very nice!
TFS
Iulian

I'm going to disagree with Iulian here--I think that clearly including the crowd emphasizes that this a festival, with an audience, and that's the context in which this aspect of the culture still survives. Which says something about the relation of the indigenous people to the larger society. The man's expression reinforces this further. Good work, Alex. Regards, Ken.